New Hotel Won't Open Until Nov. 1

The opening of the 891-room Peabody Orlando hotel, originally set for Labor Day, has been delayed until Nov. 1 because of construction problems, a Peabody official said Tuesday.

The two-month delay forced the International Drive hotel to cancel reservations for nine big conventions and book the groups into other Central Florida hotels, said Barry Anderson, the Peabody's vice president of marketing.

The Peabody will lose 15,000 room-nights of group business during September and October and as many a 4,000 room-nights booked by individual travelers, Anderson said. (A room-night is one hotel room booked for one night.)

At an estimated $80 a night for convention business and $90 a night for individual travelers, the loss of 19,000 room nights could cost the Peabody more than $1.6 million. Anderson would not specify how much the hotel was losing; the estimated room rates were supplied by the Orlando office of Pannell Kerr Forster, an accounting and consulting firm that specializes in the hotel industry.

Anderson said the hotel has ''the backing to handle'' the loss. The Peabody is a joint venture of Orlando Central Park Inc., a subsidiary of Martin Marietta Corp.; and Belz Enterprises of Memphis, Tenn., a private company that owns various properties, including Belz Factory Outlet Mall in south Orlando. The Peabody's construction problems arose when the wrong type of Italian marble was shipped for the hotel's lobby -- a mistake that was compounded by the monthlong August vacations taken by many workers in Italy. ''That just killed us,'' Anderson said.

''We will lose a tremendous amount of revenue in October,'' he said, ''but the important thing is that the customers have been taken care of. Almost all of them have been extremely sympathetic.''

The Orlando-Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau helped find rooms at other hotels for some of the large conventions, said Bill Peeper, the bureau's executive director.

The $90 million Peabody is viewed as a key to Central Florida's expanding convention business. It is being built on a 22-acre site directly across International Drive from the Orange County Convention and Civic Center. Once completed, it will be the largest hotel near the center.